Links for 3/15/10 Protest Edition

WSJ

In the last decade, government worker pension costs (not including health care) have risen to $3 billion from $150 million, a 2,000% jump, while state revenues have increased by 24%. Because the stock market didn't grow the way the legislature predicted in 1999, the only way to cover the skyrocketing costs of these defined-benefit pension plans has been to cut other programs (and increase taxes).

This year alone $3 billion was diverted from other programs to fund pensions, including more than $800 million from the UC system…

EduBubble

there is indeed money, but it’s flowing into the hands of former state retirees. One police chief is said to take home $284,000 a year! He could pay the inflated tuition of a number of students himself.

We’re at the beginning of a battle between the geezers and the twerps…

Mark Bauerlein

Robinson's conclusion: "Yet what did the protesters demand? Peace? Human rights? No. Money. And for whom? For the downtrodden and oppressed? No. For themselves."…

the target shouldn't be racism or exploitation or any other ideological sounding from the Left. It should be the gross mismanagement of public funds by the State of California's leadership in the last decade…

John Ellis

In 1964 there was focus and clarity. This one was brain-dead. The former idealism and sense of purpose had degenerated into a self-serving demand for more money at a time when both state and university are broke, and one in eight California workers is unemployed. The elite intellectuals of the university community might have been expected to offer us insight into how this problem arose, and realistic measures for dealing with it. But all that was on offer was this: get more money and give it to us…